Why Does the ABC Seem to Hate White Australia and Our History? - Part 1
On the 26th April 2023, the ABC published a piece on ‘Kamilaroi man George Bennett’ who had ‘enlisted to serve in His Majesty's Service for the Great War’, 107 years ago.
The first page of the ABC’s article is shown in Figure 1, with a highlighted paragraph that is the topic of this post.
Figure 1 - An excerpt (page 1) of an ABC article, published on Anzac Day 2023, regarding George Bennett, a WWI Aboriginal veteran. As explained below, the highlighted paragraph provides evidence that the ABC reporters have “doctored” the historical records to suit their narrative that Pvt Bennett had “possible mutilations” and “returned home scarred and [his] sacrifice ignored.” (Source)
In our opinion, we believe the ABC authors of this piece, two young Indigenous ABC reporters, Tahnee Jash, (claims in Section 1:1 to be a Yuin/Kamilaroi woman) and Carley Williams (claims to be a Quandamooka woman) have greatly manipulated the evidence so as to make ‘fake-news’ and progress their narrative that, as they write,
‘Many Indigenous soldiers, such as Mr Bennett, returned home scarred and their sacrifice ignored.’ (ibid., p2).
How the ABC Fabricates Evidence - the “possible mutilations” of George Bennett
In Figure 1 above we have highlighted a paragraph, sanctioned by the ABC, where Jash and Williams tell their readers that,
Documents from the National Archives of Australia suggest that Mr Bennett suffered with laryngitis while fighting in France before he was wounded in action in 1918. He returned to Australia by ship in 1919 with "possible mutilations".
The documents that Jash and Williams refer to are the Military Service records of Private George Bennett held in the National Archives of Australia.
Figure 2 : Said to be a photograph of George Bennett, WWI veteran. (Source)
These records for George Bennet are available, with unrestricted access, to all members of the public and can be found in digitised form online here.
Figure 3 below is page 22 of George Bennett’s file. This shows the actual original document advising of the departure from England of Private George Bennett by the ship “ORITA” on 23rd June 1919, on its return back to Australia.
The ABC’s Jash and Williams rely on this original document to make their claim that,
Documents from the National Archives of Australia suggest that Mr Bennett … returned to Australia by ship in 1919 with "possible mutilations".
We draw the reader’s attention to who, or what, was suffering from the “possible mutilations” that Jash and Williams claim George Bennett was suffering.’
Figure 3 - Document from the military file of Aboriginal man George Bennett notifying of his embarkation from England on 23rd June 1919 and his impending return to Melbourne on 4th August 1919. Note particularly that the Officer warns that ‘…owing to possible mutilations in the cabled advice, [caused by the wired and wireless technology of the times] …this notification may not be correct …’.
Thus the AIF is saying that their cable may have “possible mutilations” NOT that their returning soldier Pte George Bennett has 'possible mutilations.’(Source NAA, G. Bennett file)
Readers will see that the ABC’s Indigenous reporters, Jash and Williams, have selectively mis-quoted from an original, military document in the National Archives of Australia so as to concoct a story that Aboriginal returned-soldier George Bennett himself was returning to Australia with, “possible mutilations,” when in fact the document cited does not say this at all.
It actually says the message may be incorrect because the cabled advice itself may be suffer from “possible mutilations”, presumably due the poor connectivity of the wired and wireless technology available in 1919.
Thus, it appears that these ABC reporters have fabricated evidence to support their narrative that the National Archives contain a record to show that George Bennett was returning to Australia as a veteran with “possible mutilation” when in fact the records do not say this at all.
The ABC’s Response
We notified the ABC on 6 June 2023 of our concerns over the misinformation in the original article via the ABC’s online complaint system (Figure 4).
Figure 4 - Lodged Compliant with the ABC
About a week later, the ABC responded by agreeing with our concerns and amending their original article (Figure 5).
Figure 5 - Response from the ABC agreeing to amend their article.
Figure 6 - Listing on the ABC Corrections Page (Source)
The amended and updated ABC Story, less the “possible mutilations”, continues to appear online here. This story still has other errors and misleading narratives that we will address in subsequent posts at Dark Emu Exposed.
Further Comments
One of the reporters, Carly Williams has additionally been accused of 'rubbish reporting' and she is reportedly the subject of a complaint filed with the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
The ABC is said to have ‘apologised after sparking backlash over its coverage of an Alice Springs crisis meeting that was described as a 'white supremacist fest' [as claimed by ABC reporter Carly Williams] (Source).
The additional evidence we have now provided indicates that Ms Williams may be a ‘serial rubbish reporter’ whose future stories may need to be taken with a grain of salt.
This episode is a perfect example of why the ABC is losing an important demographic of listeners and readers, those older Australians over the age of say, 60. [See: “The ABC’s poor performance can be pegged to massive drops in the oldest demographic groups: it lost 7.1 percentage points among its most loyal demographic – listeners aged over 65 – and 4.9 percentage points in the 55-64 age group”.]
These older Australians mostly have had a ‘traditional’ Australian, evidence-based, education based on truth and clear thinking, where facts were more important than empathy or political narrative in decision making.
With only a little research, intelligent ABC viewers can see that this article appears to be crudely trying to ‘inflame a race war’ in Australia using misinformation and disinformation.
But then perhaps, Jash and Williams might be just young, naive, and good ABC foot-soldiers in the fight against racism, which the ABC tells us is 'everywhere', even in that racial hotbed known as Canberra: Racism is 'everywhere', reveals report based on survey of children and young people in the ACT [ABC 21 Mar 2023].
